![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Okay. So. I've been on a trip, since Friday. Part birthday present to me, part business trip. Mostly the latter, unfortunately, but still. I've been sitting in a hotel room for the past two nights (nice hotel room, mind), and Saturday was frazzling, and tomorrow won't be much better, but today ...
Today was pretty good.
I spent today going to good places. Places I enjoyed when I used to live in this city, and one place I never actually managed to visit, despite being here for five years. I spent today being ... more or less peaceful, really. Relaxed.
I went to the park, my favourite park, the one that always made me feel better. I ate a bar of chocolate while sitting on a tree stump beside the river, climbed up onto the footbridge to stare upstream for a while, managed to not walk in on the couple kissing in the bushes (the hell? That never happened before, those bushes don't exactly provide comprehensive cover, why would you ...? Never mind).
I walked around the south bank, climbing up onto the bluffs for the views across the central island of the city. I stayed out of the city center itself, going instead along the south channel of the river, where it's quieter and gentler, and the small residential park above the college gives you a truly stunning view out across the west side of the city.
And I visited the cathedral. I'd never actually gotten around to that, in all the time I lived here. It was ...
The thing about cathedrals? Gothic ones, anyway? They are spaces designed to make you look up. The best of them, the most lovely of them, you feel like you could sit there for hours, just following the curves of the pillars up into the light and vault of the ceiling, into the belfrey. They create a sense of reaching upwards, of light and stone and peace, and it's lovely. Spaces like that, they're good spaces. All of them.
I spent today wandering. I spent today catching fragments of peace to fold into my pocket. I spent today ... feeling good.
For that alone, even if nothing comes of the business end of things, this trip has been worth it.
Today was pretty good.
I spent today going to good places. Places I enjoyed when I used to live in this city, and one place I never actually managed to visit, despite being here for five years. I spent today being ... more or less peaceful, really. Relaxed.
I went to the park, my favourite park, the one that always made me feel better. I ate a bar of chocolate while sitting on a tree stump beside the river, climbed up onto the footbridge to stare upstream for a while, managed to not walk in on the couple kissing in the bushes (the hell? That never happened before, those bushes don't exactly provide comprehensive cover, why would you ...? Never mind).
I walked around the south bank, climbing up onto the bluffs for the views across the central island of the city. I stayed out of the city center itself, going instead along the south channel of the river, where it's quieter and gentler, and the small residential park above the college gives you a truly stunning view out across the west side of the city.
And I visited the cathedral. I'd never actually gotten around to that, in all the time I lived here. It was ...
The thing about cathedrals? Gothic ones, anyway? They are spaces designed to make you look up. The best of them, the most lovely of them, you feel like you could sit there for hours, just following the curves of the pillars up into the light and vault of the ceiling, into the belfrey. They create a sense of reaching upwards, of light and stone and peace, and it's lovely. Spaces like that, they're good spaces. All of them.
I spent today wandering. I spent today catching fragments of peace to fold into my pocket. I spent today ... feeling good.
For that alone, even if nothing comes of the business end of things, this trip has been worth it.
Tags: